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General Questions /

General questions about getting started with SilverStripe that don't fit in any of the categories above.

Moderators: martimiz, Sean, Ed, biapar, Willr, Ingo, swaiba

Looking for Pros/Cons of Using SilverStripe?


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9 Posts   3887 Views

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evilish

Community Member, 9 Posts

28 June 2010 at 3:19pm

Hey everyone,

Hope everyones doing great!

Looking at using SilverStripe as the CMS on a project I' am working on at the moment. I have used MODx, EE,Wordpress, Drupal in the past and I thought I'd give SilverStripe a go.

Before I get stuck into the CMS though, I thought I'd see whether I could get some insights into the pros/cons off using SliverStripe and Sapphire?

Any sticky points? Anything that should be avoided? Any particular gallery modules that shine above the rest? Any quick pointers would be much appreciated.

Cheers everyone!
- Evilish

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Willr

Forum Moderator, 5523 Posts

28 June 2010 at 7:12pm

Hi Evilish, Welcome to the Forums!

I'm a bit biased since I'm a core developer with SilverStripe but from my experience using Wordpress (also was quite deep with that) SilverStripe has a much nicer architecture and much easier to extend. Wordpress doesn't feel as well designed as some of SilverStripe (in terms of software design, not UI). Although if you want to easily build large websites to work out of the box you would be better to stick with the other platforms.

With SilverStripe if you have a general understanding of OOP PHP and willing to get stuck in you'll reap the rewards.

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evilish

Community Member, 9 Posts

28 June 2010 at 8:09pm

Heyy!

Cheers for the welcome and the reply, very much appreciated! I think it always says something about a piece of software when the actual developers are involved in the community. :)

Pretty comfortable with OOP, PHP and getting my hands dirty. I guess thats the reason I'am looking forward to getting this project into SilverStripe.

Just curious, when you mention that I might want to stick to other platforms when looking to build large websites straight out of the box. Any chance you could eleborate?

Running a small media agency here in Sydney, I run into various sized website jobs. So I guess, I'am looking for a little insight into any possible hickups I might run into during development.

Anyways, cheers again. Oh hey, any recommendations on a decent Gallery module? (Unless I've missed it and theres one already included. lol)
- Evilish

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Willr

Forum Moderator, 5523 Posts

28 June 2010 at 8:24pm

For gallery module see http://silverstripe.org/imagegallery-module/

Just curious, when you mention that I might want to stick to other platforms when looking to build large websites straight out of the box. Any chance you could eleborate?

I mean take Wordpress if you want to run multiple blogs, have sidebars everywhere and widgets it handles that out of the box with very little effort (point, click, drag) and anything else you need is usually covered by a plugin. You can get away with a very low level of PHP knowledge and simply feel you way through wordpress without understanding the deep workings.

SilverStripe is targeted more towards developers than the casual user/blogger so you will have to get your hands dirty into creating php files, building functions to fill in the gaps. Saying that the forum is always keen to help out on the hard stuff!

Best option is to try out the tutorials, build a couple simple sites and see how it goes for you!

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biapar

Forum Moderator, 435 Posts

28 June 2010 at 10:06pm

I tried Silverstripe and Wordpress, but I like more SilverStripe than Wordpress because in SS is more simple to build a site and css layout and I think that SS is more applicable for various web apps...With WP is like a square that would became a circle...

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Shauna G

Community Member, 52 Posts

29 June 2010 at 5:51am

As Willr said, SilverStripe is targeted more at developers, so knowing PHP is generally a requirement for using SS.

SS strikes me as a step or two above a framework. You're given a framework (in this case, Sapphire), a template system, and a basic architecture with a few pages started for you. What's there can get you up and running quickly if you're just tossing something together quickly for whatever reason and don't really need to do any customization. Where you go from there is pretty much entirely up to you, since you then build from that. Whether this is a good thing depends entirely on your level of experience with PHP and OOP (for you, specifically, it's probably a good thing), as well as the scope of a given project in question.

What I also love, too, is the community. SilverStripe has a smaller community than some of the other big projects, but as you can see, there's a lot of involvement from the people that actually maintain the core. If you post a coherent question on the forums, you're very likely to get a response, often by the people that created the portion in question (for example, if you have a question about the SWF file uploader, you'll likely get a response from its creator, Uncle Cheese). I've even seen devs responding to people that had questions or criticisms in other blogs, which is rare in my experience.

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Mo

Community Member, 541 Posts

29 June 2010 at 6:12am

Generally everything everyone has said I agree with.

I used to use Wordpress quite a bit. It is great if you want to throw together a site and aren't to worried about the design of the front end. Also, if any, more advanced functionality can be achieved solely through using plugins, then Wordpress is pretty good.

The trouble comes when you want to add functionality above the default plugins. In Wordpress, this is an absolute nightmare. Usually you have to download a plugin that closest matches what you want, hack it about abit, and then load it into your site. Then, if you want to keep that plugin upgraded, you have to go about the same process each time.

Silverstripe lets you extend current modules, or create your own really easily. But its architecture is very different to Wordpress. Like has been mentioned, Silverstripe is basically a framework, with an advanced CMS scaffold built on top. It is more like other well known frameworks, like Ruby on Rails or Django.

Hope that is of some help.

Mo

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evilish

Community Member, 9 Posts

9 July 2010 at 5:59pm

Cheers everyone for the replies! Much appreciated.

Pleasantly suprised at how quickly I was able to implement the a sliced up version of the clients website into SilverStripe.

Theres only one thing that I'm sort of struggling with at the moment and that is displaying the content from two different page types in a holder.

For example, displaying the first paragraph from the "About Us" page in the bodies left column and a collection of excerts of the latest testimonials in the right column but I might start a new thread to ask that question, along with a few extra details.

Thanks again everyone,
- Evilish

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